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31 May 2011

This is such an old outfit post and is from wayyy earlier in the year (fresh after a haircut from the looks of my super straight fringe!). Usually, a couple of these kinds of posts never make it onto my blog because they kind of get forgotten along the way. However, seeing as the fence at the bottom of our garden fell down during some recent stormy weather, I have no choice but to dig these out! If I were to take a photo right now in my usual spot, I would be staring right into their kitchen/conservatory, er...awkward!

T-shirt (Realitee) Skirt (Topshop) Belt (Vintage) Shoes (Topshop)

It also wouldn't be me if I didn't share some cute snacks right? Introducing...Choco Boy, worth buying, if only for the name and that strange slogan! I think these are Korean brand and there is a Japanese version by Meiji which is almost identical.

Anyway, I have a fun day planned for tomorrow. I'm taking my little sister on a daytrip to London and finally get to check out the Yohji Yamamoto Exhibition at the V&A! I'll probably drop by the TopShop Secret Store too. I don't think I'll be able to afford anything there...but it's worth a browse, have any of you guys been to check out the secret store yet?

27 May 2011

If you haven't read Kristabel's (AKA I Want You To Know) latest blog post, I suggest you do! At her graduate knitwear show last week, I was truly blown away by the talent that she had kept hidden from her blog for so long. I think she only ever blogged about one jumper she made (which was swoonworthy!). So without further ado, let's begin this photo-heavy post...prepare yourselves!

Kristabel's collection is called 'Archive Assembly' and as the name suggests, it was inspired by collections, particularly bookshelves and this is seen in the patterns in the knitwear reflecting the haphazard colour blocking of books. I suppose some might say I'm biased towards Kristabel's collection but I think the pictures can speak for themselves. Her collection was magnificent!

Impressed? I know I was! Aside from Kristabel's collection, I really adored these collections, I'm definitely a sucker for all things brightly coloured and it just so happened that these were the least blurry of my photos. Win.

Natalie Stead

Mollie Brown

I have to say that the Nottingham Trent 2011 knitwear grads are a very talented bunch! My digital camera is awful in comparison to all you other bloggers with your high-tech SLRs (I'm sure you could tell which ones were mine in the collage) and so I point you towards Jazmine's Flickr for more wonderful photos of Kristabel's collection and her fellow knitters. Here is the lovely lady herself, looking gorgeous in her red Zara dress (we can be twins now) and her awesome Jeffrey Campbell Alexa wedges.

Kristabel received some amazing news on Wednesday. She has been selected to show at Graduate Fashion Week on the 7th June! Her designs on the big stage? Super proud and a humungus congrats Kbel!

24 May 2011

Last week, I hopped on the train to Nottingham and my company for the day were fellow bloggers/friends, Jazmine from Jazzabelle's Diary and the always colourful Lucy from Shiny Thoughts. Together we completed the blogger motto of eating, posing and blogging and we spent the best part of the day browsing the shops on the high street and er...spending a good few hours sampling some yummy Italian food. A three course meal? Easy! Of course, in true blogger style, we whipped out our cameras to immortalise the food that we would soon be devouring.

So it's probably an understatement that we were all pretty full after that meal! We attempted to walk off all that food and we strolled into the square outside Nottingham Town Hall and of course, the cameras came out to play again.

Everyone had such great shoes. I so love Lucy's leopard print trainers from Kurt Geiger and Jazmine's pretty patent black brogues.

I think we must all have the same variation of these canal pictures, but how could I resist?

The real reason we were in town that day was to support Kristabel from I Want You To Know's graduate knitwear show. She was amazing and the event itself definitely deserves an entire post of it's own, so stay tuned!

20 May 2011

It's been forever since I've done a Japanese street fashion post and feeling inspired, I spent a silly amount of time collaging away some of my recent finds from Drop Tokyo, Rid Fashion Street Snap and Japanese Streets. I love the bold colours or in some cases, the bold accessories. The coral and dusky purple combination in the middle is particularly striking.

Some of the Japanese street fashion that I am most drawn to are the bold, 80s inspired looks. The outfits are fun and I do love a bit of acid washed denim. I'm quite drawn to the use of one colour as the base colours in the outfits (seen in the first 3 below) and I'm especially intrigued by the girl in the acid wash shorts and sheer blue skirt combo. I also have no idea what is on that guys head, on closer inspection it looks a little like a bird-hat....

I thought that the collage above fit right in with the Acid House category on the Beyond Retro site. It is as you might have guessed, full of acid washed denim and neon colours. The website itself is also full of lovely vintage bags that I would like to call my own. Dangerous territory indeed! Aside from the genius of my post title (I know, I couldn't help myself), I found a couple of things inspired by the 80s collage above. I am very tempted to find myself a dark denim jacket and chuck a whole lot of bleach on it. Messy!

Not all the images were found in that particular category on the site, but they all look like they belong together and are all lovely vintage 80s items from the vintage emporium!

I must remind myself to have a rummage in their store the next time I am in London. The Brick Lane store is my favourite. It's humungus and even has a resident cat called Tiny. What's not to love?

16 May 2011

My friend Connie who is not only well on her way to becoming a Dr in Art History is a bit of a baking extraordinaire. Her blog which is aptly called Did Someone Say Cake? is FULL to the brim with her baking experiments. Yesterday she hosted a brilliant tea party in aid of Japan and well, I couldn't NOT take any photos to share the cakey goodness with you guys right?!

She has the most amazing collection of Baking books so you can imagine how impressive her cakes were. The Hummingbird bakery book is by far, the most awesome one she had, the photos inside are all so droolworthy!

I love a bit of kitsch and I loved her cushions but most of all, the fun flag she made for the Royal wedding. Brilliant!

Now for what you've all been waiting for, the cake! She had baked a whopping 20 varieties and even though I arrived late, there was still plenty left!

11 May 2011

Oh yes, I am SO ready for the Summer, the weather has perked up a bit and Summer is definitely in the air. The thing with the warmer season is that wearing headphones is kind of uncomfortable. They're brilliant in the winter as they double up as ear muffs and keep my ears nice and toasty but not so great when it's already warm outside. I know it won't be long until I have to swap them for my standard earphones which let's be honest when it comes to sound, they don't have anything on real headphones. I don't think I'll get to visit a beach this year but one of my favourite Summer tunes is Incubus' Wish You Were Here, which is even better when you listen to it on the beach with the sound of waves softly crashing on the shore. Oh, if only I lived near the sea rather than Birmingham, the most landlocked city in the whole of the UK. Rubbish!

I get incredibly nostalgic when it comes to this song. It reminds me of awesome Summers on the beach, festivals, hanging out with my best friends and other happy memories. Definitely a song that I adore. Do you guys have any Summery songs that make you all nostalgic? I'd love to know what they are!

06 May 2011

Yesterday I met a friend for lunch, where we feasted on our new favourite thing to share which is the antipasti at Jamie's Italian. I always order mint tea from there too which is lovely and refreshing. Anyway, here I am posing with a fork and lots of cured meats and mozzarella balls.

Later on I bought these amazing tie dye shorts from Topshop. They're lovely and given the the rest of the post below, a little bit party ring coloured but unfortunately they're just not meant to be mine and I returned them this morning. Sometimes you just don't know until you take them home and try them on with your own things. I just won't get enough wear out of them and my money is probably better spent on something else. So pretty though!

My friend who I met for lunch bought me a little present which really took me by surprise. Thank you Carly!! She told me that she had a bit of a dilemma over which brooch to buy me and settled on the purple ceramic party ring in the centre made by Kath Cooper. Perfect! Little did she know I have a thing for party rings with my knitted ones (from All the fun at the fair) already in my collection. I couldn't resist buying a real packet of the biscuity treats and putting my pretend party rings among the real ones!

I can't get over how real the ceramic party ring brooch feels in my hands, right down to the little ridges on the reverse. I was really tempted to nibble at it because it feels THAT real but I guess I'll just turn to my real packet of party rings for now...

02 May 2011

I would so love to be one of those people who can blog brand new outfits all the time but alas, such is the life of having a limited wardrobe. So it's no surprise that this dress has appeared countless times on here but we all have our favourites right? I very nearly blend into the red-orange brick of my house and I'm kind of kicking myself for not wearing an entirely orange outfit now, just for the effect. One for another time maybe!

If you follow me on twitter then you know that Sunday is traditionally Dim Sum day in my house, a routine that we very rarely break. We usually start with a congee or a noodle dish and then move onto the smaller dim sum dishes but this is done the opposite way round in Hong Kong. Please excuse the half eaten food but these are some favourites from yesterday which include Shanghai dumplings, Beef dumplings, red bean buns, lo bak gao (turnip cake), cheong fun (rice noodle roll) and of course THAT infamous Cantonese delicacy, fung jow...er chicken feet! Haha, my non-Chinese friends have been unable to bring themselves to try that particular dish...so far!